Researchers Work Around Hepatitis Drug Patent

Several readers let us know about a pair of British researchers who found a workaround to patents covering drugs used to treat hepatitis C. The developers intend to produce a drug cheap enough to supply to people in the poorest parts of the world. The scientists found another way to bind a sugar to interferon, producing a drug they say should be as long-lasting and effective as those sold (at $14,000 for a year's supply) by patent holders Hoffman-La Roche and Schering Plough. Clinical trials could begin by 2008. The article quotes developer Sunil Shaunak of Imperial College London: "We in academic medicine can either choose to use our ideas to make large sums of money for small numbers of people, or to look outwards to the global community and make affordable medicines."

Comments

Thumbs up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Before the arguments about the effectiveness of this drug compared to the patented one, the morality of patents on medicine and the soviet russia jokes break out; I'd like to show my respect for these people. It's great to see this effort!

Re:Thumbs up!

[arivanov]

Chemical compounds as such are not patentable. Their use for a specific purpose, synthesis and administration are. That is usually enough to protect a drug to a point where you have effectively patented the compound.

Big Pharm does this too

[Heir Of The Mess]

For example Australian company Biota created and patented Relenza for treating bird flu, then Roche modified their product slightly to produce and patent Tamiflu.

DO these guys accept Paypal?

[Stephen Samuel]

'Cause, if they do, I'd like to donate $10 to their research fund.

Re:Patent ruling is waste of resources

[hclyff]

And where did this inventor get their education from

Absolutely. All discoveries are done based on previous published research. If every pharmaceutical company kept their research to themselves, there wouldn't be much progress really. Not to mention that in academia, if you don't publish you don't exist. That's where patents sort of come in, to allow and encourage publishing of results done by private companies.

Think of it this way: if those companies weren't guaranteed profit in case of discovering something useful, they wouldn't do the research in the first place.

Re:fallacious

[janek78]

Could you clarify that about treatment for stomach ulcers? I thought that omeprazole was already off patent (we have 11 brands available here in the Czech Republic). The cost of treatment for omeprazole is about $0.33 to $1 a day here. It is usually given for 6 weeks, so the total cost is something up to $40. And it actually compeletely cures the ulcers! Wow! Amazing.

I suggest you go back freshen up a little before you come preaching here.

And YES, I am a fucking doctor and no I don't have any shares of pharma companies. :)

See?

[Digital Vomit]

See? Patents do encourage innovation!...by forcing others to work around existing patents. :-P

Re:$1,000 per capsule.

[Quiet_Desperation]

Are you sure it was really $1000? That's $365,000 a year. The most expensive currently marketed drug is Cerezyme at $175,000 a year, and that's for some weird genetic disorder that only, like 5000 people on the planet suffer from.